January 2021 Newsletter
CCRP Grant Review Board Approves 96 Projects Totaling $1.6 Million
The Circuit Court Records Preservation Program (CCRP) Grant Review Board awarded 96 records preservation grants totaling $1,633,800 to 95 circuit courts across the commonwealth at its meeting last month. The preservation projects include professional conservation treatment for almost 350 items such as marriage licenses and deed, will, plat, land tax, and minute books that had suffered damage from use, age, pests, water, or previous nonprofessional repairs. Other grants funded records reformatting, storage, and a security system.
Board members meet once a year to evaluate applications from circuit courts clerks who apply for funds to conserve, secure, and increase access to their records. Five voting members comprise the board: three circuit court clerks, appointed by the president of the Virginia Court Clerks’ Association; and two staff members from the Library of Virginia, currently the state archivist and a senior local records archivist.
The Library of Virginia's Government Records Division administers the program, which is funded by a $3.50 recordation fee on land instruments recorded in the circuit court clerks' offices. The CCRP provides resources to preserve and make accessible Virginia's permanent circuit court records. Since 1992, the CCRP has awarded over 1,800 preservation grants totaling over $24 million dollars.
back to the newsletterWe Demand and Unfinished Business Exhibitions Continue into May
Even after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1920, many people in the United States were denied the right to vote because of race, ethnicity, age, or other factors. Unfinished Business, an exhibition that complements We Demand: Women’s Suffrage in Virginia, examines the ongoing struggle to provide access to the vote, one of the most powerful tools in a representative democracy. Unfinished Business resources are also available online and explored in an UncommonWealth blog series.
Unfinished Business extends the discussion begun with We Demand, now on display in the Exhibition Gallery. Both are available for viewing during Library’s current hours, Tuesday–Friday, 10:00 AM–4:00 PM. We Demand is also available online, with resources such as a YouTube playlist, an interactive timeline of the campaign for woman suffrage in Virginia, and voiced excerpts from writings by suffragists and anti-suffragists who shared their opinions about votes for women.
Voting rights issues continue to be vital topics, and both exhibitions have been extended beyond the centennial year of women’s suffrage through May 28, 2021. We invite you to delve into this content either in person or online.
back to the newsletterLibrary of Virginia Featured on the Smithsonian Channel
Look for a cameo by the Library of Virginia in season two of America's Hidden Stories on the Smithsonian Channel. Southern Women, Union Spies, the episode airing February 1, 2021, at 8:00 PM EST, features documents from the Library’s collections related to Richmond resident Elizabeth Van Lew, who operated a spy ring in the Confederate capital during the Civil War, and M. J. Denman (also known as Mary Bowser), a Black woman who posed as an enslaved worker in the Confederate White House to assist with the espionage.
Trenton Hizer, the Library’s senior manuscripts acquisition and digital archivist, discusses the materials with local researcher Ana Edwards in the segment, which was filmed in our Special Collections Reading Room early last year. Hizer wrote an article on the subject, Correspondence of a Union Spy: The Elizabeth Van Lew Papers, in one of last year’s issues of Broadside, the Library’s quarterly magazine.
The Smithsonian Channel describes America's Hidden Stories as “rewriting the narratives of our nation's most iconic stories” through “state-of-the-art technology and newly discovered evidence.” Visit the show’s website to see when the episode will be available for viewing online.
back to the newsletterExplore Volunteer Opportunities through “Making History with LVA”
Crowdsource with us! The Library of Virginia acquires, preserves, and promotes access to unique collections of Virginia’s history and culture. With more content and research moving online, we seek to make digital documents as accessible as possible by crowdsourcing their contents. Beginning January 23, 2021, join us for Making History with LVA, a series of monthly virtual volunteer sessions where you’ll learn how you can help make historical documents more searchable and usable for researchers now and in the future. Transcribe handwritten pages and historical newspapers by reading the text and typing it into digital form.
Each session will focus on one or more of these three crowdsourcing projects (depending on document availability):
Register here.
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